I'm a long-time socialist and activist, but new to the blogging world. I hope to bring a different perspective on politics, sports, culture, and Marxism. Besides blogging, I also leave plenty of time for swimming, hiking, ESPN, music, reading, drinking good beer, and, not least, my family and friends. I wish I could play basketball, but my knees ruled out that possibility long ago.
While I currently reside in New York, my politically formative years were spent in Portland, Me. and Detroit during the 1970s and 1980s. I graduated from St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia (where I played basketball) and received a MA in economics from the University of Connecticut.
I was the national chairperson of the Communist Party, USA from 2000 until 2014 when I stepped down at the convention. In 2016 I resigned from the Communist Party two years later. We were no longer on the same page.
Most democratic minded people expected an assault, organized by Trump and his closest advisors, on the federal government and democratic rights — immigrant rights in the first place. What stuns, and increasingly outrages them, is the fast pace and broad…
America has always, even on its better days, had an illiberal strain, as brilliantly elucidated in the recent book by Stephen Hahn: Illiberal America: A History. But the present assault, orchestrated by Trump and MAGA, on the political and social…
A working class approach that doesn’t include at its core the necessity and urgency of strategic alliances of the working class with other sectors of the popular movement (people of color, women, Immigrants, and other opponents of the Trump regime)…
Trumpism easily falls outside of the “bourgeois democratic” boundaries that governed U.S. politics for the past century and more. It is a reaction not only to the decline and crisis of the neoliberal order and the contradictions of the U.S.…
The coalition opposing Trump’s power grab is still in formation and finding its legs. That isn’t surprising, given the novelty and nature of the challenge. In these circumstances, the overarching task is to rapidly scale up its actions and organizational…